JOHN M. HUSTON, A 'RENAISSANCE MAN' IN HOLLYWOOD

John Huston

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Claire Fontaine. They have been watching a marathon of classic cinema. They love it. They have chosen some films directed by John Huston, one of the best directors of the history of cinema who died on a day like today in 1987.

Claire and The Grandma think that the best way to pay homage to John Huston is talking about his career and his life.

John Marcellus Huston (August 5, 1906-August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and visual artist.

He travelled widely, settling at various times in France, Mexico, and Ireland. Huston was a citizen of the United States by birth but renounced U.S. citizenship to become an Irish citizen and resident in 1964.

He later returned to the United States, where he lived the rest of his life. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), The Misfits (1961), Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Prizzi's Honor (1985).

In his early years, Huston studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris. He then moved to Mexico, and began writing, first plays and short stories, and later working in Los Angeles as a Hollywood screenwriter, and was nominated for several Academy Awards writing for films directed by William Dieterle and Howard Hawks, among others.

More information: BFI

His directorial debut came with The Maltese Falcon, which despite its small budget became a commercial and critical hit; he would continue to be a successful, if iconoclastic, Hollywood director for the next 45 years.

He explored the visual aspects of his films throughout his career, sketching each scene on paper beforehand, then carefully framing his characters during the shooting. While most directors rely on post-production editing to shape their final work, Huston instead created his films while they were being shot, with little editing needed.

Some of Huston's films were adaptations of important novels, often depicting an heroic quest, as in Moby Dick, or The Red Badge of Courage. In many films, different groups of people, while struggling toward a common goal, would become doomed, forming destructive alliances,  giving the films a dramatic and visual tension. Many of his films involved themes such as religion, meaning, truth, freedom, psychology, colonialism, and war.

While he had done some stage acting in his youth, and had occasionally cast himself in bit parts in his own films, he primarily worked behind the camera until Otto Preminger cast him in the title role for 1963's The Cardinal, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.

With K. Hepburn, H. Bogart, G. Peck & R. Burton

He continued to take prominent supporting roles for the next two decades, including 1974's Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, and he leant his booming baritone voice as a voice actor and narrator to a number of prominent films.

His last two films, 1985's Prizzi's Honor, and 1987's The Dead, filmed while he was in failing health at the end of his life, were both nominated for multiple Academy Awards. He died shortly after completing his last film.

Huston has been referred to as a titan, a rebel, and a renaissance man in the Hollywood film industry. Author Ian Freer describes him as cinema's Ernest Hemingway -a filmmaker who was never afraid to tackle tough issues head on.

During his 46-year career, Huston received 15 Oscar nominations, winning twice. He directed both his father, Walter Huston, and daughter, Anjelica Huston, to Oscar wins.

John Huston was born on August 5, 1906, in Nevada, Missouri. His father was an actor, initially in vaudeville, and later in films. His mother worked as a sports editor for various publications, but gave it up after John was born. Similarly, his father gave up his stage acting career for steady employment as a civil engineer, although he returned to stage acting within a few years. He later became highly successful on both Broadway and then in motion pictures. He had Scottish, Scots-Irish, English and Welsh ancestry.

During his stay in Mexico, Huston wrote a play called Frankie and Johnny, based on the ballad of the same title. After selling it easily, he decided that writing would be a viable career, and he focused on it. His self-esteem was enhanced when H. L. Mencken, editor of the popular magazine American Mercury, bought two of his stories, Fool and Figures of Fighting Men.

During subsequent years, Huston's stories and feature articles were published in Esquire, Theatre Arts, and The New York Times. He also worked for a period on the New York Graphic.

More information: American Heritage

In 1931, when he was 25, he moved back to Los Angeles in hopes of writing for the blossoming film industry. The silent films had given way to talkies, and writers were in demand. His father had earlier moved there and already gained success in a number of films.

Huston received a script editing contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions but, after six months of receiving no assignments, quit to work for Universal Studios, where his father was a star.

At Universal, he got a job in the script department, and began by writing dialogue for a number of films in 1932, including Murders in the Rue Morgue, A House Divided, and Law and Order. The last two also starred his father, Walter Huston. A House Divided was directed by William Wyler, who gave Huston his first real inside view of the filmmaking process during all stages of production. Wyler and Huston became close friends and collaborators on a number of leading films.

Huston gained a reputation as a lusty, hard-drinking libertine during his first years as a writer in Hollywood. Huston described those years as a series of misadventures and disappointments. His brief career as a Hollywood writer ended suddenly after a car he was driving struck and killed actress Tosca Roulien, wife of actor Raul Roulien. 

John Huston with Orson Wells & Marilyn Monroe

There is a rumor that actor Clark Gable was responsible for the hit and run, but that MGM general manager Eddie Mannix paid Huston to take the blame. A coroner's jury absolved Huston of blame, but the incident left him traumatized. He moved to London and Paris, living as a drifter.

By 1937, the 31-year-old Huston returned to Hollywood intent on being a serious writer. He married again, to Lesley Black. His first job was as scriptwriter with Warner Brothers Studio, and he formed his personal longterm goal to direct his own scripts. For the next four years, he co-wrote scripts for major films such as Jezebel, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Juarez, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, and Sergeant York (1941).

He was nominated for Academy Awards for his screenplays for both Ehrlich and Sergeant York. Huston wrote that Sergeant York, which was directed by Howard Hawks, has gone down as one of Howard's best pictures, and Gary Cooper had a triumph playing the young mountaineer.

Huston was recognized and respected as a screenwriter. He persuaded Warners to give him a chance to direct, under the condition that his next script also became a hit.

For his first directing assignment, Huston chose Dashiell Hammett's detective thriller, The Maltese Falcon, a film which failed at the box office in two earlier versions by Warners. However, studio head Jack L. Warner approved of Huston's treatment of Hammett's 1930 novel, and he stood by his word to let Huston choose his first subject.

In 1942 Huston served in the United States Army during World War II, making films for the Army Signal Corps. While in uniform with the rank of captain, he directed and produced three films that some critics rank as among the finest made about World War II: Report from the Aleutians (1943), about soldiers preparing for combat; The Battle of San Pietro (1945), the story (censored by the Army) of a failure by America's intelligence agencies that resulted in many deaths, and Let There Be Light (1946), about psychologically damaged veterans. It was censored and suppressed for 35 years, until 1981.

More information: Golden Globes

Huston's next picture, which he wrote, directed, and briefly appeared in as an American asked to help out a fellow American, down on his luck, was The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). It would become one of the films that established his reputation as a leading filmmaker. The film, also starring Humphrey Bogart, was the story of three drifters who band together to prospect for gold. Huston gave a supporting role to his father, Walter Huston.

Also in 1948 Huston directed Key Largo, again starring Humphrey Bogart. It was the story about a disillusioned veteran who clashes with gangsters on a remote Florida key. It co-starred Lauren Bacall, Claire Trevor, Edward G. Robinson, and Lionel Barrymore. The film was an adaptation of the stage play by Maxwell Anderson.

Some viewers complained that it was still overly stage-bound. But the outstanding performances by all the actors saved the film, and Claire Trevor won an Oscar for best supporting actress.

Huston was annoyed that the studio cut several scenes from the final release without his agreement. That, along with some earlier disputes, angered Huston enough that he left the studio when his contract expired. 

With J. Nicholson, K. Turner & A. Huston

In 1950 he wrote and directed The Asphalt Jungle, a film which broke new ground by depicting criminals as somewhat sympathetic characters, simply doing their professional work, an occupation like any other.

Huston described their work as a left-handed form of human endeavor.  

Huston achieved that effect by giving deep attention to the plot, involving a large jewelry theft, by examining the minute, step-by-step details and difficulties each of the characters had of carrying it out. Some critics felt that, by this technique, Huston had achieved an almost documentary style.

Huston's next film, The Red Badge of Courage (1951), was of a completely different subject: war and its effect on soldiers. While in the army during World War II, he became interested in Stephen Crane's classic American Civil War novel of the same title.

Before The Red Badge of Courage opened in theaters, Huston was already in Africa shooting The African Queen (1951), a story based on C. S. Forester's popular novel. It starred Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in a combination of romance, comedy and adventure.

Huston took producing, writing, and directing credits for his next two films: Moulin Rouge (1952); and Beat the Devil (1953).

Moby Dick (1956), however, was written by Ray Bradbury, although Huston had his name added to the screenplay credit after the completion of the project.

Although Huston had personally hired Bradbury to adapt Herman Melville's novel into a screenplay, Bradbury and Huston did not get along during pre-production.

More information: The Guardian

Of Huston's next five films, only The Misfits (1961), gained critical approval. Critics have since noted the retrospective atmosphere of doom which is associated with the film. Clark Gable, the star, died of a heart attack a few weeks after the filming was completed; Marilyn Monroe never finished another film, and died a year later after being suspended during the filming of Something's Got to Give; and costars Montgomery Clift (1966) and Thelma Ritter (1969) also died over the next decade.

He followed The Misfits with Freud: The Secret Passion, a film quite different from most of his others. Besides directing, he also narrates portions of the story. Film historian Stuart M. Kaminsky notes that Huston presents Sigmund Freud, played by Montgomery Clift, as a kind of savior and messiah, with an almost Biblical detachment. As the film begins, Huston describes Freud as a kind of hero or God on a quest for mankin".

For his next film, Huston again traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, after meeting an architect, Guillermo Wulff, who owned property and businesses in the town. The filming took place in a beach cove called Mismaloya, about thirty minutes south of town. Huston adapted the stage play by Tennessee Williams. The film stars Richard Burton and Ava Gardner, and was nominated for several Academy Awards.

John Huston & her daughter, Anjelica.

Producer Dino De Laurentis traveled to Ireland to ask Huston to direct The Bible: In the Beginning. Although De Laurentis had ambitions for a broader story, he realized that the subject could not be adequately covered and limited the story to less than the first half of the Book of Genesis.

After several films that were not well received, Huston returned to critical acclaim with Fat City. Based on Leonard Gardner's 1969 novel of the same name, it was about an aging, washed-up alcoholic boxer in Stockton, California trying to get his name back on the map, while having a new relationship with a world-weary alcoholic.

Perhaps Huston's most highly regarded film of the 1970s, The Man Who Would Be King was both a critical and commercial success. Huston had been planning to make this film since the '50s, originally with his friends Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable. Eventually the lead roles went to Sean Connery and Michael Caine. The movie was filmed on location in North Africa. The film was praised for its use of old-fashioned escapism and entertainment. Steven Spielberg has cited the film as one of the inspirations for his film Raiders of the Lost Ark.

After filming The Man Who Would Be King, Huston took his longest break between directing films. He returned with an offbeat and somewhat controversial film based on the novel Wise Blood. Here, Huston showed his skills as a storyteller, and boldness when it came to difficult subjects such as religion.

More information: History News Network

Huston's last film set in Mexico stars Albert Finney as an alcoholic ambassador during the beginnings of World War II. Adapted from the 1947 novel by Malcolm Lowry, the film was highly praised by critics, most notably for Finney's portrayal of a desperate and depressed alcoholic. The film was a success on the independent circuit.

John Huston's final film is an adaptation of the classic short story by James Joyce. This may have been one of Huston's most personal films, due to his citizenship in Ireland and his passion for classic literature. Huston directed most of the film from a wheelchair, as he needed an oxygen tank to breathe during the last few months of his life.

In the 1996 RTÉ documentary John Huston: An t-Éireannach, Anjelica Huston said that it was very important for my father to make that film. She contends that Huston did not think that it was going to be his last film, but that it was his love letter to Ireland and the Irish.

A heavy smoker, Huston was diagnosed with emphysema in 1978. By the last year of his life he could not breathe for more than twenty minutes without needing oxygen.

He died on August 28, 1987, in his rented home in Middletown, Rhode Island, from pneumonia as a complication of lung disease, three weeks after his 81st birthday. Huston is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood with his mother.

More information: Roger Ebert

The directing of a picture involves coming out

of your individual loneliness

and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world.

A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on.

And one day you die. That is all there is to it.

John Huston